I was in our rectory chapel and looked out the window to see a young father and his 2 yr old son and 8 month old daughter running through our lawn sprinklers, laughing and clinging to one another. It was so pure and beautiful. Never saw him before, but I told him he made my day.

Yesterday I visited a friend and former parishioner in the hospital. I did not know it would be her last Communion. What a pure grace for me that the Lord permitted me to feed her with the food for her last steps on her pilgrimage to the Father’s House.

It has been such a beautiful day off, reading all manner of good things.

I love Sundays in the parish.

Today I celebrated Mass for the Feast Day of St. John Vianney at our local nursing home. As I was distributing communion, I felt incredibly privileged. I offered Mass for all my brother priests and for seminarians. Happy Feast!

Every August, around the Feast of St. John Vianney, the priests and seminarians of the Archdiocese of Archdio. of Boston gather for a cookout PopeStJohnXXIIISem with the Archbishop. Tonight was such a great night of priestly fraternity.

Today is first day of school at our parish. Makes me remember when I was a kid how excited I was to go back to school. New lunchbox, new crayons, excited to be in a new grade, bored of summer. Then, every year, after about day two, I'd feel like I'd been duped yet again.

24 years ago tomorrow my mind couldn't comprehend the evil that man can inflict upon others and how fragile life can be. And here we are again.

Change the world? Change the country? Jesus: “Change your heart.”

In front of us always is that invitation, “Follow me,” but sometimes a particular moment arises when that invitation is clearer and more urgent. It is a moment of grace. It is a decisive moment. It is the acceptable time. Today Christ is looking at us and saying , “Follow me.”

As I visited many shrines in France last week on pilgrimage, I saw the hand of Providence in my life. I grew up in Sacred Heart Parish, served the weekly Miraculous Medal Novena Mass in the Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel, and became a friend to Therese of Lisieux in that chapel.

I showed up at 11:15am for our 11:20 confessions today. They went until 11:55 and then, after Mass, I went back and heard them for another 25 minutes. Love that.

After a very long, full Sunday in the parish, I like to end my day with this prayer that I wrote myself, “Lord, please don’t let the hospital call me tonight. Amen.”

To look into the eyes of St. John Paul II and to hear his voice always confirmed within me a strong sense that I was loved by him, and his gaze and his voice were an assurance that I was loved by Christ. The memory of him still fills my heart with that assurance.

Makes me happy to look around the parish today + see: Confessions, Mass, Adoration, Blessing of School Classrooms and images of Patron Saints, Bereavement Group, Prayer Shawl Group, Young Adult Holy Hour and Happy Hour, 1st Grade Rel. Ed, School Fundraising Meeting, outofspace...

After Mass today a man greeted me, "Good Morning Monsignor." (I'm not). Later, a couple coming into Mass asked me when I was leaving?" I told them it was the other priest who got transferred. They shrugged and said "Oh, thought it was you." From Msgr. to a shrug in under an hour.

I’m visiting someone at the hospital. I’m glad to see they give the Catholic lab workers special privileges.

I visited a 95 year old parishioner the other day and brought her Communion. She said, “Father, I’m so blessed. I was sent to parochial school, and the Faith never left me.” She died—unexpectedly—shortly after. She was a great lady. Joyful, strong, and faithful.

Finding quality Christmas cards with . . . Oh, I don’t know . . . Jesus, Mary, Joseph . . . on them shouldn’t be so hard, but it is. Plenty of trees, sleds, the Grinch, and even R2D2 and C-3PO. “It’s beginning to look a lot like—non-religious vacuous holiday—everywhere you go.”

Being a parish priest: You spend the whole weekend surrounded by people in whom Jesus is doing amazing things. They are the answer to the heart’s question:“Are you the One or should we look for another?” I see them and what Jesus is doing in them and I know, “He is the One.”